Hopes Went To Sea While Haiti Sank

It was just before 9 a.m. and a tropical breeze stirred the air as the 79 men and women sat with expressionless faces on the stone floor of the port pavilion.

One by one they were called forward by the immigration officer and their names were checked against a neatly typed list. They then squatted in the shade and waited with their small bundles of belongings sitting next to them.

The men were dressed mainly in shabby trousers and tattered shirts. The women wore simple cotton dresses and head scarves.

In the corner an official from the U.S. Embassy here, dressed in a wide-brimmed Caribbean hat, a loose-fitting cotton shirt and well-creased trousers, watched the proceedings.

Two other Americans, who refused to identify themselves but who appeared to be from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), stood chatting nearby. One wore a denim suit; the other was in jeans, a T-shirt and jogging shoes.

The 79 people were among 195 Haitians returned to this desperately poor nation on a single day last week by U.S. Coast Guard officials who regularly board ships headed for the United States looking for people just like these.

Last year alone, 3,648 Haitian ``boat people`` were caught at sea by the Coast Guard and sent back home.

They are fleeing a land where the minimum wage is $2.46 a day but where many people earn less than a dollar for a day`s work. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a place where half of the 6 million people either have no work or eke out a living on the streets doing whatever they can.

Those who leave usually do so on rusting ships that are far from ready for a journey to Florida. At best they risk capture and return; at worst, death at sea.

U.S. officials, who have caught 6,152 Haitians trying to get to the United States since October, 1981, estimate that as many boat people perish en route as they capture.

The story of these 79 and their attempt to enter the U.S. illegally, Haitian and U.S. officials said, was typical.

Delon Jaques Deslindes, 33, and Charles Altidor, 29, like most of those in the group, were from villages around the Haitian city of Port-au-Paix.

The two said they had been thinking about making the journey to the U.S. They decided to go when a man approached them offering passage.

``He started coming around saying there was a ship going soon. That was all he said,`` Deslindes explained.

He agreed to pay a man who called himself Cius Vertus $630 for the trip. Altidor paid $350. Some people on the boat gave Vertus as much as $2,000.

Deslindes and Altidor borrowed the money for their fare from friends and relatives. They promised to send money back once they got jobs in Miami.

``The people who pay are basically betting on the ability of these people to get to the U.S.,`` a Haitian port official said.

On Jan. 16, the 79 passengers gathered in Port-au-Paix and the 22-foot-long boat set off.

For the next 22 days, the 79 Haitians chugged their way north, past Cuba and on toward the Bahamas. The people ran out of food and, for a time, had no water. They slept on the deck and used the ship`s hold as a toilet.

The appalling conditions are not unusual, U.S. officials said. Last month, for example, Coast Guard officers stopped a freighter and found 13 Haitians hidden in a secret compartment. The compartment was six feet high, one foot wide and just long enough for the 13 to fit in it standing shoulder- to-shoulder.

On Feb. 7, the boat carrying the 79 pulled into a small Bahamian island to take on water and it was there that their journey ended.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sheerwater came alongside and INS officers boarded the ship.

Feb. 7 happened to be the day that Haiti`s former President-for-life Jean Claude Duvailer fled his country on board a U.S. Air Force plane. These 79 Haitians found out about it from Bahamians on shore who shouted the news to them.

According to a U.S. official here, the routine followed on boarding such a ship is always the same.

INS officials, at least one of them speaking Creole, the language of 90 percent of Haitians, question everyone on board.

``Haitians, being extremely honest people, usually tell the truth,`` the U.S. official said. ``Almost everyone says they were going to the United States for economic reasons. Practically no one asks for political asylum.``

All 79 people on board said economic reasons led them to leave.

``Why would I go on that boat if I could get a job here?`` Altidor said.

Asked if he would attempt such a journey again, he said, ``If I find a job here I`ll never leave. If not, I`ll try to go back.``

But for the moment other economic realities may dictate the lives of Altidor and Deslindes. They owe their creditors $350 and $630 respectively. Neither has a job.